Abstract: AimsTemperature is often considered as an important limiting factor for plant growth and production. Ecosystems are often affected by the global warming. However, there is little known about the effects of the global climate change to the lipid peroxidation and protective enzyme activities of Cunninghamia lanceolata in subtropical zones.MethodsHeating cables were used to generate a warmed environment in the wild. Two treatments—control and warming (with five replicates each), were used in the study. We sampled fresh leaves of the C. lanceolata to examine the osmotic adjustment substances, inter water use efficiency, protective enzyme activities, and malondialdehyde content.Important findings 1) Warming improved osmotic ability, whereas its effect on lipid peroxidation of C. lanceolata was not obvious; 2) Warming significantly improved inter water use efficiency and carbon sequestration benefits, which indicated that warming decreased the water consumption costs of carbon sequestration; 3) Warming decreased the activity of superoxide dismutase and peroxidase, but significantly increased the activity of catalase and ascorbate peroxidase. These results suggest that warming could protect itself from high temperature through protective enzyme activities (especially catalase and ascorbate peroxidase) of C. lanceolata, which is beneficial to stable cell metabolism. Therefore, more studies are needed about how temperature affects the C. lanceolata under global change in this region.